Markus Liebherr, who died on August 9 aged 62, was a Swiss-based, German-born
industrialist who revived the flagging fortunes of Southampton FC.

Southampton, known as the Saints, had suffered several years of decline when Liebherr, previously unheard-of in Britain, emerged as a buyer in July 2009. The club had just been relegated from the Football League Championship to League One, having suffered a 10-point deduction because its parent company had gone into administration.

Bankruptcy threatened when a consortium led by the former Saints star Matt le Tissier withdrew a tentative offer. But Liebherr then stepped forward with a Swiss banker, Nicola Cortese, at his side, and made an offer for the club – within two hours of setting foot inside the St Mary's ground – that was believed to have been around £13 million.

Liebherr was a large, slightly unkempt man ("more fusty professor than globestraddling engineering mogul", according to one local correspondent) with an unassuming manner and a limited command of English; but he had a beaming smile whenever he appeared in the directors' box sporting a red and white scarf.

He preferred to leave the running of the club to Cortese, whom he appointed chairman, but was clearly delighted with his purchase, declaring himself "here for the long term". He discovered an affinity for the city of Southampton, derived, perhaps rather tenuously, from the fact that his family company had long supplied cranes for its docks and construction projects.

In return he was welcomed by Saints fans, whose affection for him grew as the club's fortunes rapidly improved, financially as well as on the field. A new manager, Alan Pardew, was appointed within a week of Liebherr's arrival, and a string of signings costing £3 million swiftly followed. In March this year the club won its first significant prize since 1976, defeating Carlisle United at Wembley to claim the Football League Trophy.

Markus Liebherr was born on March 30 1948, the son of Hans Liebherr, a native of Kirchdorf in southern Germany who had been an apprentice builder as a teenager and served as an army engineer during the Second World War. After the conflict, Hans got together with a local blacksmith to build a prototype transportable tower crane, which he exhibited at the 1949 Frankfurt Trade Fair.

Orders for the crane slowly began to arrive, and one of Germany's great postwar industrial enterprises was born. In common with many German entrepreneurs of the era, Hans was extremely frugal and cautious – he regarded debt as a form of gambling, and kept a firm grip on what became a multiplicity of decentralised companies (which made fridges, aircraft parts and construction machinery, and owned hotels) by the simple technique of making unannounced visits to them in his battered old Mercedes.

Having become extremely rich as a result, Hans moved the company's base of operations to Switzerland in the early 1970s to avoid inheritance taxes; he died in 1993, leaving an empire with more than 30,000 employees around the world. All five of his children had initially joined him in the business, but his second and third sons, respectively Hubert and Markus, in due course handed back their shareholdings and struck out on their own. Control of the Liebherr group remains in the hands of their siblings, Willi and Isolde.

Markus went on to build the Mali group of engineering businesses, based in Fribourg, specialising in "common rail" fuel-injection technology for diesel engines, and also manufacturing off-road vehicles. Little was known of his private and family life, but his wealth was estimated at around €3 billion. The club said that he had carefully laid out plans for its future during his last illness.